Day 30 (6 July): Relaxing by the Mediterranean

I woke up this morning to find that the gullet Boat that I intended to spend the next four days on would not be leaving today as planned but would be leaving tomorrow instead. This meant that there was little rush to get to Fethyie and that I did not need to take a bus that arrived at 1 AM because of the delay in Aydin. While this was frustrating it was also probably a good thing, as I have think I may be traveling at an overzealous pace at least thus far. After the overnight bus which pushed me over the edge to feeling somewhat sick the recovery time was nice. It let me catch up on this blog, respond to numerous other e-mails, plan the rest of my trip, etc. (Despite, getting good comments from a lot of people, I may have to start condensing some of these, since internet connections keep getting slower and I want to spend my time enjoying traveling, but we'll see.) It also meant a chance to go to the beach in nearby Calis and taking in some more Roman ruins in town.

This does, however, mean that I will not be able to make it to Eastern Turkey which I had planned to do. I was particularly excited about Eastern Turkey because it is more authentically the Middle East than the rest of Turkey. At the same time that is probably a good thing considering there have recently been some terrorist attacks in the less progressive Eastern part of the country. (Also while I was in Istambul, a suicide bomber tried to kill a high level government official, I believe the Foreign Minister, in Ankara, which I doubt made news in the US.)

If there is nothing over the next several days, that's because I'm on a boat, not because something bad has happened to me.

Observations:
1) Transportation reliability. No one in Turkey seems to care if transportation goes slowly or stops working. It is just a fact of life that people here accept.
2) Local/regional transport. The Dolmus here is a van that travels along certain fixed routes and stops for people who flag it down. This seems to be more effective than public bus routes in many ways as there are no established stops and it can go longer distances. It is a little bit confusing to me, however, as I do not know the routings.
3) Internet. It is also not reliable here. The ADSL connections for everywhere in town today went down for about 5 hours and nobody got upset. They just think it is how the technology works. If the connection were more reliable, more people would probably use it, although a lot already do.
4) Fresh fish. Fish here are probably about as fresh as they were in Sweden. Guys in motor scooters pull up to the docks, load fish from boats into baskets on the sides of their bikes and then drive off to nearby restaurants. Quite impressive.
5) Muslim women covered up sitting on the beach. I saw a couple today and it just seems odd. They look like they have to be quite hot all of the time, but especially so when they are sitting out in the sun on the beach wearing dark clothes. They either must have a lot of faith or a lot of fear to put up with such things.

Day 29 (5 July): Ruins

This morning, the night bus arrived in Epheses, which was the Roman capital in Asia and has the ruins of what at the time was the second biggest city in the world after Rome. I don't think that there are ruins of a similar quality anywhere else in the world, especially, ones where so much is know about the city and its history which was quite decadant. The city used to be on the Agean which is now about 3 km away as the water level has fallen or the mountains have risen.

In the evening, I got on another bus, this time headed to Fethyie, which is a seaside town on the Mediterranean. A connecting bus, however, was overbooked so I had to spend a couple of hours in the town of Aydin, which apparently doesn't get many foreign visitors. A couple of about 10-year-old boys who apparently wanted to learn English circled around me during my two-hour wait and we had some sembalance of a conversation using a Turkish-English dictionary one of them had.

1) Islam and the night bus. On the night bus, they started playing what I believe was a Dominican movie dubbed in Turkish until it got to a pretty raunchy sex scene that I don't think would even make theaters in the US. It was pretty funny to see the Islamic women who were covered up's reaction to this, especially since about half of the women on the bus were (which is realtively high compared to Istambul at least.) The movie was promptly shut off and instead we got to watch Rambo III dubbed in Turkish which was also an interesting choice.
2) Original plumbing. The Roman ruins had pipes running through the walls of their building that worked as a heating and cooling system. In the winter, they ran hot steam through the pipes (which for some reason is still how they heat the building at MIT) and cold water through them in the summer. The town also had some of the first baths with running water (conveniently linked via underground tunnel to the local brothel.) They also had an impressive library, which is today the best preserved building.
3) I met an older Canadian guy (probably in his late 50s or early 60s) today who is also traveling around the world. His trip, like the guy I met yesterday's, is more impressive than mine. He is sailing alone in a boat that is only 24 ft. long and told me he spent 37 days straight awake when he crossed the Pacific. He has not been back to Canada in 5 years and is trying to break several world records.
4) World changing events in economic history, we don't learn about (or I don't remember learning about) in education in the US. The battle of Gallipoli was a big win for the Turks against the Allies (mostly over the Australians and New Zealanders as the British put them on the front line) during WWI. According to some Australians I met, if the allies had won this battle Russian would have continued to be able to export to the West easily and its economy would have done better, making it less likely to have become a Communist country.

Day 28 (4 July): Independence Day in a Mosque

I saw the Blue Mosque (one of the largest in the Islamic world) this morning, followed by the Tokapi Palace (the headquarters for the Ottoman Emperor and noted for its large harem) in the afternoon.

I spent the afternoon, killing time, waiting for an overnight bus. I came across another tout, also for the third time and went back to his carpet shop and had tea with him again. After talking to him for some more, he told me he would give me a carpet for free, since I was being friendly and actually talking to him and teaching him things whereas most American tourists wouldn't spend the time to do so. (He seemed decent enough, but I just hope nothing suspicious arrives with the carpet when it gets to the US since he is shipping it for free as well.)

The overnight bus I took was an experience as well as it starting pouring heavy rain in the afternoon. I woke up at one point an the bus was on a ferry with some big cargo trucks which was disorienting. Furthermore, I think I may have been the only non Turk on the bus.


1) When I went to the Blue Mosque, this Turkish guy asked me what I was doing, since it was Independence Day in the US. He thought it was strange that I would go as an American on our Independence Day since as an American, I am not supposed to like Islamic people. I had to explain that we do not and I think he got it, but I am not sure.
2) There was a short power outage this morning when I tried to check my email. The guy in the shop told me that was semi-normal (occuring approx. once a week) because the city was growing too fast for supply to meet demand. We talked for a while when the power was out and he explained to me that Turkish people are used to being in the dark so it is OK for them.
3) The guy from the internet place, also explained to me why Turks like Americans so much. He thinks that Turks are uniquely capable of understanding the post 9-11 world in the US, since they have been dealing with fundamental Islamic terrorism since the early 1980s from Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Modern Turks practice a much more progressive form of Islam. This guy had surprisingly visited 25 US States which is something I think few Americans have done (although I have been to 47.)
4) Savings. The same guy from the Internet place, also told me about the Turkish attitude towards savings. He said that no one in Turkey saves ahead because when they do they are used to losing all of their money; he said the three times he has tried to plan more than a year ahead that has happened to him. Apparently, credit card debit is becoming very common amongst younger Turks as well.
5) Watering the streets. In Istambul, people water the streets frequently. The theory behind it is that it keeps the city cooler. I think it just makes in messier as streams of dirt slide around the city.
6) Another way to see the world. I met a kid at the Tokapi Place today who is originaly from Long Beach (and turns out to have gone to high school with one of my college fraternity brothers) who is also on an around the world trip, but he gets paid to do it. For three years, he has been crew on a private motor yacht for the guy who founded Tyson's chicken as it travels around the world.

Day 27 (3 July): Asıa and Back ın 20 minutes

This morning I took a ferry over the (mostly residential) Asia side of Istambul to meet up with Demet who a graduate of the UCSD IR/PS Masters program I attended that is originaly from Turkey. She met me at the Kadiköy ferry station. From there we drove around the Asia side of the city which is rarely visited by tourist and showed me some sights along that side of the Straights. We stopped by an authentically Turkish place by the water to get tea (since they actually rarely drink coffee here) and got some Turkish snacks: all bread of pastry based foods which were quite good as was the tea. We talked a lot about Turkey and also of course about the program we were in at UCSD and other Europe alumni from it. (She wants me to try to come back to a Europe alumni weekend in Istambul in the late fall.) After tea and snacks, we drove around a little more including to a park which looked almost exactlly like Mission Bay in SD near her apartment where I met her cousin.)

I took a late afternoon ferry back across to Europe. Returning to Istambul, I went to the Aya Sofia musuem which formerly was a Mosque and before that a church. I then ran across some touts that I had seen two times previously, actually the guys who told me they were Iraqi/Kurdish. They invited me to dinner at their house, so I went with them because by this point they seemed friendly enough and not that sketchy. Dinner was great, as I learned a lot about their tout business (which may be worth studying) and their family/history.

Observations:
1) Only about 15% of the 1.7M people who take the Turkish university acceptance exam are admitted to college which mean that only about one in thrity five people attend universities.
2) Turks abroad. Demet seemed very concerned about Turks abroad and understands why there is tensions with them and the countries they are in. Many of them particularly in Germany moved there in the 1960s for economic reasons but still only speak Turkish, which she believes, I think correctly, is wrong. She said that these people need to be brought back to Turkey to see what the country is like now before they should be allowed to move back to Turkey. Her take on the Turkish neighborhood, I went to in Berlin was that it was like a small Turkish village and not like a big city.
3) Islamic women wearing covers and veils are not just seen as practicing Islam but are actually seen as making a political statement. Recently more and more women have been wearing veils in Turkey. Women who do so are not allowed to attend school which means there are a lot that do not.
4) Japanese really like Turkey. Demet who also speaks Japanese was telling me that Japan actually has very strong ties with Turkey. She used to work for the Turkish economic and trade promotion agency in their East Asian department, so she speaks Japanese and has a number of Japanese friend in Turkey. Apparently, Japanese is also in the same language family as Turkish, meaning the grammar is identical. It is also in the same language family as Hungarian and Finnish, but nothing else is known to be the same.
5) Japan is definitely changing. I met another Japanese guy today who had quit his job in semiconductor manufacturing to travel to Turkey for 3 months. He expects there to be enough demand in the labor market for his job that he should easily be able to pick it up again when he goes back to Japan. This all seems strange to me given the lifetime employment practices Japan has.
5) Touts just like to learn. Many of them will spend a lot of time talking to foreigners and particularly Americans because they like to learn about the rest of the world. Considering that few if any attended school past high school, they are highly educated.
5) Multi ethnic acceptance. Turkey apparently is very good at embracing and absorbing and accepting multi ethnic people. In the family I had dinner with the mother was Kurdish (from near the Syrian and Iraqi border) and the father was Las from near the Black Sea.
6) Family ties are very, very strong in Turkey. The family I ate dinner with had all of the father's brother's over for dinner.
7) Helping others. They also accepted another man, named Mili, who worked in the same group of touts, into their family as his brother found him on a park bench in Istambul when he was only 15. It turns out that he is actually Kurdish and originally from Iraq. The family used him to gain business particularly from Japanese clients, as this guy had a Japanese girlfriend for several years who taught him decent spoken Japanese. It turns out he was particularly good at ripping off Japanese tourists, especially after he told me the margins he made on them versus the margins he made on English speakers. I guess less of the touts speak Japanese at any level, but none as well as him, so he is more welcoming. Studying this guy's business would be quite interesting, especially to see how much speaking a person's native language well helps with sales, and if the effects are stronger for one language rather than another.
8) Service orientation is extermely high in Turkey. Anywhere you go in Turkey the service is really great and people are extermely friendly and helpful. Somehow this works in a culture that does not tip. How strange, considering there is poor service in most parts of the US and we tip more than any other culture in almost a prefunctory fashion.
9) I am a Millionarie (in Turkish Lira.) Turkey introduced the New Turkish Lira only in January where one new Turksih Lira equals one million old Turkish Lira. This makes things a little strange for pricing because prices get quote all over the place. Sometimes they will say 750 meaning 0.75 New Lira or 750,000 Old Lira; the same price might also get quoted as 75, but 75 could also mean 75 Million Old Lira or 75 new Lira. The population seems to be quite good at accepting the new currency, however, and today was the first day that I have been given one of the old notes so far which made me feel rich until I realized what was going on.
10) Turksih acceptance to the EU. Demet seemed slightly positive on this happening, but not for a long time given the economic advances of Turkey (which are certainly greater than in much of Eastern Europe.) Nonetheless, she thought correctly that moving to EU standards would be a good thing. (As an example of progressiveness, people in Turkey actually accept Euros fairly readily, and certainly more so than in some of the Eastern European countries I was in that were already pegged.) Many of the touts and shopkeepers thought it was less likely that Turkey would ever be admitted to the EU based solely on the country being predominatly Islamic, wheras the rest of Europe is Christian.

Day 26 (2 July): Bazar?

For the majorıty of the day today, I explored the markets around Istambul and the Grand Bazar with some Australian girls I met on the plane from London. (One offered to take me saling in Sydney harbor when I am in Australia so I may have to follow up on that.) The sheer size of the Bazars and markets (particularly the spice market) is really amazing, its about 10 by 15 city blocks for the Grand Bazar. I also crossed over briefly into the Taksim (which is the newer European part of the city, north of the river.) I also sampled random street foods for shockingly low prices. Later in the day, I visited some more touts stores for sheer entertainment. In the evening, I went to a tea and water pipe shop with some people I was staying with: a Polish guy who had been studying at a University in Ankara, a Finnish guy who lived in Denmark, and a Bulgarian girl who lived in Amsterdam. All of them were international relations students which made for interesting conversation.

Observations:
1) Universities in Turkey have instruction solely in English according to the Polish guy. That certainly says they have a very outward orientation. All three of the other Europeans thought that in their home countries, education should be done in English as well, which surprised me, until I realized that with the exception of the Finnish guy their countries have weak economies and that Finnish is spoken by so few people. They all also thought that better English skills would be necessary to make the EU work more effectively.
2) Visa issues for Turks. A number of the touts I talked to were very upset about visa issues trying to leave the country. They seemed to think that the US government randomly denies people visas along with most European countries.
3) I am glad I am not a woman traveling alone. The Australian girls, kept getting calls from guys trying to identify where they were from and whistling. Nonetheless, they thought it was less bad in Turkey than other countries they had travelled to.
4) I do not understand how the people who sell things in the Bazars make any money. Their will be 20 shops selling the exact same thing next to each other and must have the same suppliers. That is as close to the perscription for perfect economic competition as anything I have ever seen. The only thing that distinguishes the shops is their ability to bargin with consumers, most of whom seem to shop around for the best price. The same go with Kepap shops which sell sandwiches for as little as 0.50 USD which can not possibly be more than the cost of meat, lettuce, tomato, bread, and sauce. Even with really high volume, making money at any of these places seems really difficult. It would be interesting to open the books for these places to see how they actually make money.
5) Mall culture. If Turkish Bazars have been around for a long time then mall culture in the US and in particular Southern California or suburbia generally in the US is not that strange as it seems like many Turkish people come to the Bazars just to hang out and waste time.

Weird observation:
1) The cross walk guys in Istambul actually walk when they are green for crossing and stand still when they are red for do not cross. No one pays attention either way though and people and cars seem to share the streets about equally. I would not want to drive here.

Day 25 (1 July): So I am technically still in Europe

Flew from London to Istambul thıs morning missed by alarm. Fortunately I made it to the airport with time to spare. (By the way, I do realize that part of Istambul and the part I am staying is still technically Europe, but it is certainly feels more Middle Eastern or Asian than European.)

Arriving in Istambul, I easily took public transportation to the hostel I stayed in. Once I got off at the last tram stop, I was greeted by a number of touts who I entertained for a while, while I looked at a map to figure out how to walk where I was going. They thought it was funny to tell me they were Kurdish and moved to Turkey from Iraq, and that they knew I worked for the FBI, and that they would get 5,000,000,000 Lira if they killed me and 10,000,000,000 Lira if they killed me on camera. Obviously they were joking, so it was kindof funny. They eventually were friendly enough to actually walk me to the place I was staying, while stopping me by a carpet shop along the way, of course.

Before going to bed at night, I could hear the Islamic call to prayer, which is far more striking in person than it could ever seem on TV. It even made me want to go to a mosque just to see what was happening, but I figured that was not the best idea.

Observations:
1) Heathrow is by far the best London airport. Only 15 minutes from the Circle Line on the Tube. The other airports take nearly an hour and trains leave from further out locations.
2) Easiest visa ever. To gain entry into Turkey all I had to do was go to one counter tell them I was an American citizen and hand them a 20 USD bill. They handed me a stamp for the visa which I pasted into my passport. I then walked to another line with my passport open to the visa page where it was promptly stamped with out even looking at my picture or name. I do not think it as easy to get in anywhere else. Every country so far I have at least been asked how long I plan on staying.
3)Crafty touts. The touts here are really good. They are very good at picking out what countries people are from and changing their language based on it. They will say something in Japanese, Spanish, French, Austrailan English, British English, or American English depending upon who walks by. One guy even pegged me as being from DC and claimed he had just moved back to Istambul and had seen me at Kramer Books in Dupont Circle one month earlier. Another guy tired to claim he lived in LA, but when I pressed him further, he could not back up his story with any details on LA.
4) Japan is changing. I met at 35 year old Japanese guy at the hostel who recently quit his job at a large bank in Japan. He was travelling around the Middle East for 4 months before going back to Japan to start his own company. This seems completely unheard of for Japan, several years back.

Europe Wrap-up

Here's a quick wrap-up on Europe:

Observations:
1) There is a much stronger Middle Eastern connection in Europe (and particularly in Eastern Europe) than in the US.
2) The Cold War. Its quite surprising how scared we were of a lot of the Eastern European and former Communist countries just 15 years ago. While they might have had nuclear weapons, people in Eastern Europe still seem like good people and do not seem like they should be feared. This seems to show the power of propaganda on both sides.
3) Ethnic identity. Europeans have very strong ethnic identities. It was very surprising to me all over Europe how people could readily point out people who were different than them (although still Caucasian) within their countries without even hearing them speak to know they had a slight accent. In Latvia, there was a strong distinction between Lats and Russians. In Germany, there were Germans and any type of Eastern Europeans. In Croatia, people seemed to be able to identify other Slavs who were not Croatian even. Many people's ability to correctly identify people's ethnicity was quite surprising to me and seemed to belie some sense of skepticism of outsiders.
4) Language differences cause a lot of difficulty between European countries. None of the countries I went to shared a common language so people seemed to

Best places I've visited:
Hungary and Sweden. These two countries are certainly the places I am most likely to visit although they are very different. Hungary was far more exotic and different than the US and there was much more to do than I expected. Sweden did not have nearly as much to do as Hungary and was not very exotic, but it was the nicest, cleanest, most beautiful place I have been and the people there seemed to have a nice, relaxed, lifestyle that included spending lots of time outdoors and partaking in outdoor sports. I could see myself living there and enjoying it. Both countries also had the best food of the places I've travelled thus far.

Day 24 (30 June): Scandanavian culture

Before leaving Stockholm in the afternoon I took in a couple of more Museums: the History Musuem and the Scandanvian Museum, both of which were basically about Sacandavian history and culture and well designed. I also went on a tour of the city's amazing city hall and had a very autentic Swedish lunch (white fish with some kind of horseradish based sauce and potato shavings) with Tove before getting on my bus to the airport.

Upon arriving in London where I stayed for one night only, I helped Fabian celebrate accepting a new job offer and had some interesting conversations with his Russian roomate Alexi (who provided us with the best tasting Vodka I have ever had but apparently is sold only in Russia.)

Economic observations:
1) Brand conciousness seems to be low in Sweden although design conciousness seems high. No one seems to buy things because of their brand in Sweden but they do pay a lot of attention to how well they are designed.
2) Growth of cities at the loss of small towns and villages. This seems to be a trend everywhere, but is certainly true in Sweden. Tove's hometown, Umee, is the largest city in Northern Sweden at aprox. 100,000 people, yet she said everyone seems to be leaving there for Stockholm or another big city because that's where jobs are moving to. She said the same is true for villages near Umee, that people who live there
3) Vacation time. In Sweden having about 2 months off per year is normal and people take the time. Tove's family has three houses: one on a lake for the summer, one by the mountains for the winter, and their regular home. Apparently, this is quite typical in Sweden as people tend to vacation 'at home' rather than traveling abroad during long breaks.
4) Gap years. In Sweden a gap year is also normal, that is like is common in the UK and Australia, kids normally take a year off to travel or work in another country before heading to University. The only reason that I think this does not happen in the US is because formal education in the US cost so much more than it does in these other countries.
5) Baggage issues. I had the same baggage issues again with Ryan Air which still don't make any sense to me.
6) I thought it was strage that there was a direct flight from Stockholm's budget airline airport to Lahore, Pakıstan that leaves three times a week. How popular of a route can that be, especially for an airport with only 5 gates?

Day 23 (29 June): Island Hopping

Today I took a couple of different boats around the Stockholm Archipelago which are islands that are between the city and the Baltic. The only real town on any of the islands in the Archipelago is called Vaxholm where I stopped and had a very nice lunch of locally caught fish. On other islands in the Archipelago were old forts used by the Swedish and by the Vikings to protect the city, some public parks (e.g. empty islands with just beaches and trees), and some vacation houses for the ultra rich. All of the islands had a very New England like feel to them.

Upon my return to Stockholm, I took in other parts of the city and visited the Vassa Museum which has a recovered ship in it that sunk in Stockholm harbor on its maiden voyage; legend has it that the King at the time wanted it to be the most spectacular ship to date covering it with very heavy ornamentation and weapons that due to their weight made it unseaworthy. Nonetheless, it was quite a spectacular site.

Economic observations:
1) Shipping networks. The Swedes get creative with this as they ship supplies (including what looked like a box of Ikea furniture) out to the Archipelago islands via passenger ferries. I actually noticed a similar shipping method on the bus between Slovenia and Croatia where people were shipping boxes to friends at the other end of bus routes. I don't think I've seen this in the US, but it should happen at some level because it should keep costs down.
2) Fresh fish is infinitely better than day old fish. The fish I had for lunch, while I don't know what type, was excellent mostly because it had come just out of the sea.
3) Bilingualism. Almost everyone is Sweden is perfectly bilingual in English with an accent much like American English (with a slight British one for certain words.) Nonetheless, everyone seems to think I must be Swedish because that is the language they try speaking to me in first whereas in all of the other countries I've been to so far with the exception of Germany everyone I've run into starts out in English immediately.
4) Currency units. The smallest unit of the Swedish currency is 1 Korna which is equivalent to about 0.12USD. This makes prices for goods and services seem very odd, since the lowest price for anything tends to be at least 5 Korna or nearly 0.60 USD even if its something very cheap or very small. Likewise the unit by which prices tend to increase by is usually 5 Korna, so things get expensive quickly.
5) Sweden or at least its Archipelago must not get very much tourism. from the US. I had a conversation with a guy who lived year round on the archipelago who thought it was very strange that anyone from the US would want to go visit the Archipelago.

Day 22 (28 June): Enjoying the (almost) Midnight Sun

I began the day by exploring Old Town area of Stockholm (Gama Stala) with a first stop at the Royal Palace and its three related museums. It has to be one of the nicest I have ever seen. From there I went to the Nobel (Prize) Museum which was housed in the old stock exchange. They had a brief exhibit on Clive Granger who won shared the 2003 economics prize and who was one of my Professors at UCSD in addition to a lot of other neat things on Economics and the Sciences. (I also saw the hotel where they put up prize winners and the Palace dining room where they have a reception dinner for winners, which more than explains the glow Prof. Granger had on his face when he returned to San Diego.) I continued around the old town and government areas, seeing the parliament building and some other things.

In the evening, I met up with a Swedish friend, Tove, who did a year long exchange at UCSD and moved to Stockholm in the winter for work. She showed me around the shopping area (filled with stores that had lots of unmistakably Swedish furniture and clothing design stores along the lines of Ikea and H&M) and one of the fanciest residential area. From there we continued into a large outdoor park called Skagen that has a farm filled with Scandanavian animals like Elk, Reindeer, etc. and a number of old houses brought from around Sweden and reassembled in the park. On this night was the largest event at the park all summer, celebrating Swedish heritage, so there were a number of people dressed up doing traditional Swedish dances and songs. Also there was a very, very large outdoor stadium that had a free concert with both modern and traditional Swedish music in it. (Tove thinks I might have been the only American in attendance and she was probably right.)

After the concert we went to a water side, floating bar in the fancy residential neighborhood for some people watching. Interestingly, as an outdoor venue it came with blankets for patrons, since even in the summer with 22 hours of sunlight every day, it still gets chilly at night.

Economic observations:
1) From my conversation with Tove, we agreed that jobs almost universally sound cooler before you start doing them. Julian in Berlin had the same observation.
2) Saving money is always good. In the Royal Palace, a number of columns were painted to look like marble rather than being marble. The Swedish King who did this is credited with running the country better than any other Swedish King as he could use the money for other more important things.
3) Sweden is probably more Socialist than any of the former Communist countries I went to. According to Tove, however, the socialist institutions are starting to be abused and it looks likely that the socialist party will be stripped of power soon. As an example of the system unwinding, she told me that she recently purchased private health insurance because she did not fell she could trust the government health system any longer (after it took three years for her grandmother to get a knee operation done limiting her from being able to get around outside the house for nearly three years.)
4) High taxes explain why everything in Sweden seems so expensive to me because like in other European countries tax is included in the quoted prices of things. This does not seem like so big of a problem if you are Swedish and receive benefits from the government, but if you are not it is offputting.
5) Food in Sweden is taxed at over 25% and they are thinking about raising that tax. It seems like a silly tax to raise since food is a necessity. Alcohol is very highly taxed; the glasses of average wine we had cost nearly USD 20 each which puts them at least three times the prices you would find in the US.
6) Bikes are also very popular in Sweden. Where there are stairs, they actually put a small ramp that is just wider than a bike tire to make Stockholm more bike accessible. I thought this was very cool and would be a good addition in US cities.
7) Most foreign banks charge a USD 5 transaction fee for withdrawing money in another currency. This makes me feel very lucky to have a bank that just charges the spot rate. I wonder how they can afford to do that when Swedish, German, and Australian banks, to my understanding, have this high fee.

Quote of the day (by Einstein at the Nobel Musuem):
The mere formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution, which may be a mere matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilites, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative immagination and marks real advance.

Day 21 (27 June): Crossing the Baltic

I spent the morning today in Riga, perusing the Latvian History and Latvian war museums. I also wandered out into the newer parts of Riga outside of the old town and actually did not find them all that different. The buildings still looked nice, the shops were of the same type, etc. Neither of which was very impressive, but worth going to since they pretty close to being free.

In the afternoon, I boarded a flight for Stockholm, since it turned out to cost 1/3 of what an overnight ferry would have cost. Arriving at the budget airline airport, which was actually 100 km north of the city, I boarded a bus into the city and got a nice glimpse at the Swedish countryside. Upon arriving I walked around the city a little and began to get my bearings before going to sleep. The Swedish countryside has to be some of the most amazing I have seen anywhere, rolling fields of grass with wildflowers everywhere and the occasional rock formation. The city of Stockholm might also be the most beautiful city I have ever seen as it is made up of several islands with bridges connecting them over small rivers. No matter where you look there is water somewhere. It is also one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen, without a spec of graffiti, sign of homelessness, or anything else that could be construed as being dodgy, even near the bus/train depot.

Economic observations of the day:
1) Ryan Air has the dumbest luggage weight restrictions I have ever heard of. Your checked luggage must weight less than 15kg. Mine weighed 15.5 kg, so they wanted to charge me 60USD to check it, when my flight only cost 30USD. They also told me I could take something out of my bag and carry it with me on the plane. The best options were either a wet towel or smelly sneakers. I am not sure how carrying either of those onboard is good for the airline or makes other passengers happy, but I obliged and did that instead of paying an extra 60USD. I understand that the rule is in place to save fuel by making the payload on the plane lighter, but if that is the case they should make all passengers get on a scale and weigh them before selling tickets, since fatter people cost more to get from point A to point B on a plane.
2) Price shock! Stockholm cost nearly 10x more than Riga does and they are less than an hour flight from each other. While they do not share a land border, the difference is even more striking than crossing the border from San Diego into Tijuana. What makes it even more interesting is that Latvia at one point was under Swedish control.
3) The percentage of that population that is blonde haired, blue eyed was much higher than I expected, but so was the number of Black people as well. It turns out that Sweden has immigration policies that are fairly generous with letting Africans file for asylum there.
4) The middle eastern influence could also be seen a little in Stockholm with a couple of random kebab shops but not as many as in Eastern Europe or as in Latvia. Europeans on a daily basis are clearly more exposed to people from the Middle East than we are in the US, which might explain part of why US tensions with the Middle East run so high.